Steve Kagen: “Yes, they do. We go into medicine, most of us, because we care about people. We seek to solve problems for people. The…”

“Yes, they do. We go into medicine, most of us, because we care about people. We seek to solve problems for people. The model at our clinic was how can we help you today. So we take people, and we take all people, but the real question is this: Is Medicare able to pay for the cost of producing the service at an institution? They do not. So that cost is shifted to others who can afford to pay, and those prices are sky high. So many of the problems that we face, government has not really had its feet put to the fire saying, you know, you should pay for the cost of producing the service, at least for the overhead plus a margin of profit; you should pay for the entire cost of producing a medication or a vaccine, or it will not be there. There are two ways to get rid of anything. Let us take cigarettes as the example. If you want to get rid of cigarettes, tax the heck out of it or do not pay for it. It will be gone. The same is true in health care. If you do not pay for the service, the institution at the hospital, it cannot stand. It cannot balance its budgets. Most hospitals that I am familiar with in Wisconsin are running margins of profit anywhere from 3 to 5 percent, if they are profitable. So it is very difficult to make it. But to summarize Medicare, it is over 40,000 pages of rules and regulations. I do not know that there is anyone that fully understands it, and just think of it as a mess, and it does need to be repaired.”